Madure's Legal Resources

Amanda Knox and the Power of Projection

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 06:18:49 PDT

Like most of you, I'm sure, I've been stunned by the verdict against Amanda Knox in Perugia, Italy, and trying to gauge its accuracy. I've also been coming up with many questions about the trial and the Knox family's repeated statements of their daughter's innocence. As several commentators have pointed out, we seem to have watched not only two Amanda Knoxes on trial, but two different portraits of an American college student. Her closest friends insisted last night, on CNN, that Amanda is the least violent person they've ever met. The Italian media and prosecution insist, by contrast, that she's nothing short of a "she-devil," nymphomaniac, and a participant in satanic rites.

The guileless purity that Knox's family is insisting upon, somewhat frantically, in their daughter squares poorly with the Knox who's been cast by the Italian media as craven and vilely evil, partly because she had several affairs while abroad and partied a bit as an exchange student. (As if many of them don't.) Yet we do know that Knox was quite prepared to defame her boss, Patrick Lumumba, and falsely accuse him of murdering Kercher. Knox's family understandably prefers not to discuss that and other factors strongly counting against her.

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Jared Loughner Incompetent to Stand Trial

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Wed, 25 May 2011 22:23:21 PDT

Jared Loughner is incompetent and will not stand trial for now, a federal judge ruled at Wednesday's mental incapacity proceeding. Loughner was arrested in the fatal Tucson shootings that wounded congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and killed six people.

Loughner had to be removed from the mental incapacity proceeding after an outburst. A reporter said he heard Loughner lower his head and say, "Thank you for the freak show. She died in front of me," reports CNN.

After his removal from the courtroom, Loughner watched the rest of the proceeding on a TV screen in a nearby room.Loughner had spent the last five weeks undergoing a mental health evaluation. Prosecutors had ordered the mental health evaluation after they saw YouTube videos of Loughner wearing a hood, garbage bags and burning an American flag, reports The Houston Chronicle.

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Mom Streamed Sex Abuse of Daughter Over Webcam

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Sat, 26 Mar 2011 21:18:04 PDT

Many of us feel that the worst crime a person can commit is sexual abuse of a child.

But even that can be made much worse.

In a shocking story out of Mars Hill, Maine, a woman was sentenced to 20 years in prison for making--and sharing--pornographic videos of herself performing sex acts on her two year old daughter.

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A brand marriage made in heaven? Reputational risks in corporate partnerships

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 01:19:36 PDT

In this digital age of social media and 24/7 rolling news, the need for a company to manage and maintain a positive image has never been more important. Today's increasingly competitive commercial landscape can make correctly managing a reputation vital to commercial success. However, getting it right can be a tough challenge. Managing the reputation of a brand is difficult enough, but what happens when a company decides to associate their brand with another?  

Companies of all kinds invest large sums of money in brand associations, sponsorship deals, entertainment partnerships and community-based partnerships. Yet how often do companies consider the potential for brand bed-fellows to inflict damage on their own enterprises? Any sponsorship deal obliges a company to relinquish a degree of control over its reputation. Sponsorship in itself is a risk – any relationship can break down – so a deal must be a calculated risk.  

Warren Buffett famously said that a reputation takes years to build but can be ruined in five minutes. In 2011 five seconds might well be more accurate. Risks take many guises. Examining how an organisation deals with its corporate relationships could be a preventative exercise that helps maximise the many benefits to both parties, and also saves time and – potentially – a great deal of money. 

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What if Facebook Removes My Business' Page?

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 07:57:16 PST

So you've got a Facebook page for your business. You have some likes, some friends. What happens if another business comes along and demands Facebook take down your business page?

One recourse may be to sue Facebook. Just ask a New York spa named Complexions.

A California spa also named Complexions discovered the New York spa's page; and sent a "take down notice" to Facebook.

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Clarence Thomas Too Biased to hear Obamacare?

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 21:52:26 PST

When Ginny Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, stepped onto the political stage during the Obamacare debate, it was previously unheard of to see the spouse of a court member make a political statement. Ginny Thomas' ties to anti-health care reform groups, including her own Tea Party-aligned Liberty Central, may now be causing her husband some problems.

Seventy-four House Democrats have called for Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse himself should the health care reform law make its way into the Supreme Court, reportsThe Huffington Post. In a letter, they assert that Ginny Thomas' ties to, and financial gain from, anti-Obamacare groups raises questions of her husband's ability to rule impartially.

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Is Calif. Ban on Violent Video Games Legal?

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 09:08:28 PDT

Are violent video games analogous to literature, which is not restricted by age, or is that a silly comparison? The U.S. Supreme Court is preparing to hear a case regardingCalifornia's state ban on the sale of violent video games to minors.

Those in favor of the ban say it is important and necessary to protect the children. (You always hear a lot about "the children" around election time.) Publishers and filmmakers say the kids are going to be just fine, but restricting video games is wrong and could have a chilling effect. California officials and their defenders say the ban is important to protect children. Publishers and filmmakers argue that if the Supreme Court sides with California, the action could chill creativity in other media.

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Welfare, Well-Being, and Happiness

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 02:20:47 PDT

Normative legal theory is concerned with the ends and justifications for the law as a whole and for particular legal rules. Previous entries in the legal have examined exemplars of the three great traditions in normative theory--consequentialist, deontological, and aretaic (or virtue-centered) perspectives. There are important differences between these three families of theories at a very general and abstract level: for example, deontologists emphasize rights and wrongs while consequentialists emphasize the goodness or badness of states of affairs. And there are differences between particular theories within the broad families: within consequentialism, for example, welfarists emphasize preference satisfaction, whereas hedonistic utiliarians emphasize pleasure and pain...

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Prosecutor Accused of 'Sexting' Abuse Victim

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 22:53:19 PDT

According to MSNBC, Kratz sent over thirty sexually suggestive text messages to the 26 year-old abuse victim in a case he was assigned to prosecute. The three day sexting barrage was in an effort to start a relationship with a women who was fresh off a very, very bad relationship. Telling her several times she is "hot" or referring to her as a "tall, young, hot nymph," the 50 year-old Kratz originally denied that his texts were sexual in nature. The victim, Shannon Van Groll, felt otherwise. Van Groll reported the sexting to the police, but was worried that Kratz would drop the case against her ex-boyfriend if she did not respond to his advances. MSNBC quotes spokesman Tony Gibart: "His actions were more than a lapse in judgment. They in fact do have far reaching implications for victim safety and public safety."

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Michael Douglas Cancer: Failure to Diagnose?

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 08:38:56 PDT

Recently, producer and actor Michael Douglas announced he has stage IV throat cancer and is currently undergoing radiation and chemotherapy. According to interviews,Douglas said he sought treatment for a very sore throat earlier in the summer. He saw many doctors who could not find the cause of the problem until very recently.

According to the London Telegraph, it was not until a biopsy in early August that the cancer was revealed. A walnut-sized tumor was discovered at the base of Douglas's tongue. Reportedly, symptoms of a dry and sore throat, ear pain and vocal problems did not point the way to the true problem until months after Douglas first sought help.

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Restaurant Fined for Toad Licking Chef Video

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 03:42:16 PDT

Do you know what your employees are up to? If you don't chances are someone else will, and you might face legal trouble because of it. A restaurant owner in Iowa is being fined, thanks to the toad loving antics of his chef. The Scott County Health Department officials also very much appreciated the fact that the chef's actions violating the health code were captured on video, making their job that much easier.

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Child Seat Laws: What You Need to Know

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 07:22:55 PDT

Most adults are quite used to buckling up when they get into a car. But teaching our kids to do the same is not only important, it is the law. Each state has its own child seat laws that require various safety restraint systems for children depending often on age and weight. Here are a few examples of some of the most common.

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Court OKs Fetus Wrongful Death Car Crash Suit

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 07:18:56 PDT

In what looks to become a slippery slope, a Wisconsin 4th District Court of Appeals gave the green light for a man to sue his unborn child's mother's insurance company for wrongful death, after the woman's negligent driving played a part in a car accident. Following the accident, the mother gave birth to a stillborn fetus.

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What is Debt Financing?

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 05:46:19 PDT

Potential or current business owners often ask: what is debt financing? In order to illustrate the importance of that question, let us offer another one:

Besides poor management, what is the top reason why a business fails?

Poor concepts?
Lack of advertising?
Down economy?

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What is a Fictitious Business Name?

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 05:45:33 PDT

The term "Fictitious Business" gets thrown around quite frequently. While some might mistake it for a shady business that is "made up," it actually is a legal term for a form of registration required of businesses in certain situations. So how does one know whether they need to file a fictitious business statement?

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Legal Theory Lexicon: Welfare, Well-Being, and Happines

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 20:36:29 PDT

OnStar Technology Leads to Accused Murderer's Arrest

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 20:33:14 PDT

Thanks to GPS and communications system Onstar technology police have arrested Bryan Ashline, a young father, in connection to a double homicide in the Village of Bath New York.

Bryan Ashline, 23, was arrested on Father's Day and is a suspect in the slaying of a 25-year-old woman and their 3-month-old son, the Daily Star reports.

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Book Review: 'Public Interest Litigation in India: A Renaissance in Social Justice' by Mamta Rao

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 20:31:34 PDT

This book gives a brief description on the past, present and future of the public interest cases in India and abroad. It proves to be an excellent guide to the law students especially at beginning of their studies. Author Dr. Mamta Rao is currently a lecturer of Durgawati University, Jabalpur. She is eminent author who has written a number of law related books for basic and advanced studies in law.

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Russia: Investigate Beating of Human Rights Lawyer

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 20:19:07 PDT

The lawyer, 31-year-old Sapiyat Magomedova, represents victims of human rights abuses, including taking their cases to the European Court of Human Rights. Her colleagues at Omarov and Partners, the law firm she works for in Khasavyurt, Dagestan's second largest city, told Human Rights Watch that police officers beat Magomedova unconscious on the premises of the Khasavyurt police department on June 17, 2010.

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Legal Theory Lexicon: Path Dependency

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Tue, 11 May 2010 21:09:53 PDT

The phrase "path dependency" is used to express the idea that history matters--choices made in the past can affect the feasibility (possibility or cost) of choices made in the future. This entry in the Legal Theory Lexicon introduces this idea to law students, especially first-year law students, with an interest in legal theory.

The General Idea of "Path Dependency"

The general idea of path dependency is that prior decisions constrain (or expand) the subsequent range of possible or feasible choices. That is, a decision, d, made at t₁may affect the choice set, S = (c₁, c₂, . . . c_n) at t₂. We can define a choice set as a set of actions that a given agent could take. Or to expand the path metaphor, if we imagine a network of paths through time, from past to future, decisions to branch at an earlier point on the chosen path may affect the destinations that one can reach from a later point on the path. Sometimes, if we choose the left fork, we may be able to reach exactly the same destinations we could have reached via the right fork, but sometimes, our choices foreclose some possibilities altogether. It isn't always the case that in the long run, there's still time to change the road you're on.

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Legal Theory Lexicon: Efficiency, Pareto, and Kaldor-Hicks

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Mon, 03 May 2010 22:59:52 PDT

Almost every law student get's some introduction to normative law and economics in their first year of law school. One of the basic ideas of normative law and economics is that the law should be "efficient." But what does efficiency mean? For economists, "efficiency" is a technical idea--with only a tangential connection to the use of "efficiency" in ordinary speech. In order to understand economic efficiency, we will look at what are called the Pareto principles and a related idea that is sometimes called Kaldor-Hicks efficiency.

In addition to explicating the idea of efficiency, we will take a qucik look at some of the criticisms that might be made of this concept. Although many economists operate on the assumption that "efficiency" is an uncontroversial good, that conclusion is controversial both inside and outside of the discipline of economics.

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Legal Theory Lexicon: The Law Is A Seamless Web

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 03:06:02 PDT

F.W. Maitland, the famous legal historian wrote, "Such is the unity of all history that any one who endeavors to tell a piece of it must feel that his first sentence tears a seamless web." (A Prologue to a History of English Law, 14 L. Qtrly Rev. 13 (1898)) Maitland didn't actually say that the "law is a seamless web," but he is usually given credit for the idea that the law forms some kind of "organic unity" or is characterized by strong interconnections. The idea that law is seamless web is ambiguous--the aphorism expresses different ideas on different occasions. This post in the Legal Theory Lexicon series will explicate the seamless web metaphor and its several implications for legal theory.

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Legal Theory Lexicon: Contractarianism, Contractualism, and the Social Contract

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 08:20:19 PDT

Some of the key conceptual tools deployed by legal theorists are likely to be familiar to most law students from their undergraduate education. One of these is the notion of the "social contract"--familiar from Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau. But unless you were an undergraduate philosophy major or have some graduate work in philosophy, you may not be as familiar with some of the ideas that have grown out of the social-contract tradition.

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Shin on Unconscious Discrimination

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 08:17:53 PDT

A steadily mounting body of social science research suggests that ascertaining a person's conscious motives for an action may not always provide a complete explanation of why he did it. The phenomenon of unconscious bias presents a worrisome impediment to the achievement of fair equality in the workplace. There have been numerous deeply insightful articles discussing various aspects of this problem and canvassing its implications for antidiscrimination law.

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Vagueness and Ambiguity

noreply@blogger.com (madure) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 08:38:45 PST

This week the Legal Theory Lexicon entry focuses on "ambiguity" and "vagueness"--two important concepts for the theory of interpretation. Some legal texts are ambiguous--they can have two or more distinct meanings. And some legal texts are vague--they use concepts that have indefinite application to particular cases. And some legal texts are both vague and ambiguous--they have multiple meanings, some (or all) of which have indefinite applications. Because "vagueness" and "ambiguity" are basic concepts in the theory of interpretation, its important to master each of them and to understand the difference between them.

As always, this entry in the Legal Theory Lexicon is aimed at law students, especially first year law students, with an interest in legal theory.

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